Action for Market Towns Awards

AMT Awards

Action for Market Towns National Awards Action for Market Towns founded its awards scheme in 2004 to recognise and showcase initiatives that are helping our small market towns to adapt to change and flourish.

The Action for Market Towns National Awards are supported by the Big Lottery Fund.

Read about the 2012 Action for Market Towns Awards

Who can enter?

The traditional definition of a market town is one where agriculture dominates in a settlement that serves a rural hinterland.

However, for the Action for Market Towns Awards, the presence of a ‘market’ as such is not the determining feature – more important is the relationship between the town and its hinterland.

Towns (or villages) eligible to enter the Action for Market Towns Awards:

have a population of between 2,000 and 35,000,
offer at least convenience shopping and meet some weekly and specialist needs,
act as a service centre for their hinterland and local community (providing, for example, a bank/cash point, doctors surgery/health centre, secondary school, library and so on).

What are the categories?

Towns can enter their projects in 1 of 4 categories:

Environment and Culture
Social and Community
Business and Economy
Partnership and Strategic Working

What are the geographic zones?

Applications are invited in six geographic zones:

1. North Zone – North East and Yorkshire and Humber
2. West Zone – West Midlands and North West
3. East Zone – East of England and East Midlands
4. South Zone – South East and South West
5. Welsh Zone – Wales
6. Scottish Zone – Scotland

Celebrating the winners

Both category winners and overall zone winners will receive a certificate and the zone winners will have an opportunity to showcase their projects to other towns at an AMT workshop within their zone in the summer.

All the winning projects join our Case Studies Database of good practice and receive local and national media attention.

The overall winner from each zone goes on to present their project at the Action for Market Towns National Awards, which take place at Action for Market Towns’ National Convention in October.

Based on these presentations and their knowledge of the projects, the judges decide who will be the Action for Market Towns National Awards Overall Winner. The judges also review the winning category projects from each zone, with one project from each category being selected for the national Highly Transferable Project award.

Both the Highly Transferable winning projects and the overall National Awards Winner are announced at a Gala Awards Dinner at the AMT National Convention.

What type of projects win?

Award-winning projects are those that successfully tackle common small town problems, which might be:

bank and post office closures
concentration of services in larger towns
decline of traditional shopping centres due to out-of-town shopping parks
the end of manufacturing industries and lack of new jobs
the lure of large cities which leaves many towns as dormitories

Read about past winners:

What are the judges looking for?

The judges look for projects that:

show innovation or creativity in design, delivery or execution
show long-term financial viability or a contribution to the social, environmental and economic quality of life for local people
involve the local community and community partnerships in the development and delivery of the project from an early stage
include links to Market Town Healthchecks or similar research and consultation exercises or to strategic regional strategy or policy documents

The project you apply for can be ongoing but a significant proportion of the project activity must have taken place in the last 12 months.